Top Shelf #2

This week: The Up documentary series, Violette FR, Boody, and flying foxes

Welcome to the second instalment of Top Shelf: a titular series in which I show off the very best things I’ve come across lately. One per category, so you know each is truly Top Shelf.

Prepare for quite the motley collection of recommendations this time around!

📺 TV

The Up series

This may be the daggiest and most belated recommendation ever, but have you watched the Up series? You know, the documentaries following a group of Brits’ lives, filmed every seven years, starting with 7 Up! released in 1964?

I knew vaguely of the premise, but had never watched them until my husband found them recently on an archive website, which allowed us to cast them to our TV. We watched the first, 7 Up!, battling through 1964-quality footage and sound. That first film - which at the time, was intended to be stand-alone - sought to interrogate the Aristotle quote, “Give me a child until he is seven, and I will show you the man”. If you gathered a group of children from a cross-section of socioeconomic classes, schools, and areas of London, could you predict how their lives would pan out?

After 7 Up!, we spent two weeks sinking into their lives - those of Neil and Suzy and Bruce and Jackie and Simon and the rest of them - watching them grow from precocious children to excruciatingly awkward 14 and 21-year-olds (imagine your thoughts on sex and politics and race at those ages being immortalised) to fully-fledged adults. Seven year jumps were compressed into days, chunks of lifetimes consumed within a couple of weeks. It was intense and emotional and it made me think and feel a lot.

I expected to be interested in the way such a concept could give you a window into the world changing - fashion, hairstyles, offices and homes, technology and production values - but I didn’t expect to feel so emotionally attached to some of the participants, hyper-aware of my own mortality, and reflective about the questions it asks and returns to: What is success? What legacy do I want to leave? Do I want marriage? Children? What do I want to do and be? How do I cope with mental illness, or a relationship breakdown, or a job loss? How much money do I want? What’s important and enduring to me? Do I have regrets? What makes a good life?

Watching each instalment in quick succession made seven years seem like a blip. 7-year-olds became 63-year-olds quickly. But the constant, the heartbeat, was what it is to be human: trying, failing often, succeeding sometimes, figuring out what you want your life to look like.

From 28 Up onwards, I cried in each one. It was strange to feel so invested in and moved by footage of people from the 80s/90s/early 2000s, knowing they have (hopefully) lived many decades of life since. ‘Spoilers’ were just a Google search away. (I, miraculously, resisted. I don’t know how I did it.)

I wondered about how it would feel to have your life recorded in such a way, whether knowing you were being filmed every seven years would influence decisions both big and small, and their timing (it made sense to me that at least one marriage ended not long after one stint of filming; having seven years of breathing room to heal and move on with your life would be 10000x better than talking to camera in the midst of a divorce). I thought about an intimate, intrusive record of your life once every seven years, broadcast to millions, versus capturing, editing, and posting your life daily on social media to millions of followers.

I’m undecided about having children, and the series gave me a new way to grapple with that question: seeing participants as both children and parents, watching one not want children but change their mind, another certain about their desire but questioning the possibility as years go by without a partner.

It made me think of the lives my parents lived before they were parents, and how I (maybe?) wish I had such a thorough record of their younger years.

It made me think about how long and short seven years is, and how quickly a life can pass.

Have you watched the Up series? If you watched them as they aired, what was a viewing experience that spaced out like? If you haven’t watched them yet, can you (lol)?

The most recent, 63 Up, aired in 2019, meaning the next will be 70 Up in 2026. How on earth can I wait three years for an update on my friends!? I hope they’re doing well.

💄 Beauty

Violette FR

I’ve had an eye on Violette FR for years, and now the brand is finally available in Australia via Mecca. I bought the Bisou Blush stick in Aissa and the Bisou Balm in Betise.

The blush is marbled, transferring a swirled combination of opacity and translucency onto the cheeks so it looks as though the colour is emerging from within. The colour Aissa is a perfect berry flush, and very easy to lightly tap on or build up. But I’ve found I have to gently run a brush over the stick and then deposit the colour to my cheeks, versus swiping it straight on. When I’ve dragged the stick across my face, the pigment sits in my pores and creates little red dots I can’t shift even with blending.

The lip product is the perfect ‘my lips but better’ colour for me, and very similar to/better than the Glossier Generation Gs. The matte, blurry balm doesn’t last ages, but it’s easy to reapply throughout the day, no mirror necessary.

I haven’t tried the eye paints, worrying they might be too pigmented and unruly. Am I wrong?

🤓 Substack read 

How Glossier Sold Us Nothing,

Jessica DeFino

How Glossier Sold Us Nothing

Speaking of Glossier, here’s a super fascinating interview with Marisa Meltzer, the author of the brand new Glossy: Ambition, Beauty, and the Inside Story of Emily Weiss’s Glossier, which “combines in-depth interviews with former Glossier employees, investors, and Weiss herself to bring you inside the walls of this fascinating and secretive company … The Devil Wears Prada for the Bad Blood generation, Glossy is a gripping portrait of not just one of the most important business leaders of her generation, but also a chronicle of an era.”

The fact Glossier has launched into Sephora US before bothering to ship to Australia grinds my gears, but I still totally got ‘it’ (that hard to pin down coolness/effortlessness of it all) when I visited the old New York flagship in 2018, and the London store recently.

I wonder how the brand will go post its Sephora launch, when ‘cool girls’ are now catered to by the likes of Merit, Kosas, Westman Atelier, Violette FR, Jones Road etc. Very keen to read Meltzer’s book.

🥼Wearing: Boody

I’m late to the game, but Boody is good. I bought the nightdress, full bust wireless bra, and two pairs of undies: one regular, one period proof.

The nightdress is soft, the bra supportive enough for days lazing at home but comfy enough to sleep in (very hard to find one that does both as a big-busted person), and the period undies are lighter and less bulky than others I’ve tried.

I’ll absolutely be placing another order.

🦇 Seeing: Flying foxes, Parramatta Park

How weird are flying foxes? There’s an enormous colony of them in Parramatta Park. Around 15,000 of the creatures cling to a stretch of trees along the riverbank, writhing and flapping and congealing during the day, before taking to the skies at dusk.

A couple of weeks ago, we headed to the park on a Sunday afternoon to work and read, ending up on a bench near the colony. It was the closest I’d ever been to their trees, and I was mesmerised. Take a look:

They are very strange but very cool.

What’s been on your Top Shelf, in one of the categories above or another entirely? Have you seen the Up series?!

Until next time,

Britt